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AMD Makes An Evolutionary Leap In Linux Support

06-19-2008, 09:10 AM

Phoronix: AMD Makes An Evolutionary Leap In Linux Support

Less than a year ago we shared with you the revolutionary steps AMD was taking to deliver significant improvements to their once infamous proprietary Linux display driver and at the same time the work they were doing to foster the growth of an open-source driver for their latest graphics card families. These steps have certainly paid off for both AMD and the Linux community at large. AMD's proprietary driver is now on par with NVIDIA's Linux driver and there are two open-source ATI drivers picking up new features and improvements on an almost daily basis. AMD also continues to publish new programming guides and register information on a routine basis for their latest and greatest hardware. This has been truly phenomenal to see, but AMD has now evolved their Linux support by taking it a large step further. AMD is in the process of pushing new high-end features into their Linux driver -- such as Multi-GPU CrossFire support -- and with the ATI Radeon HD 4850 they have even begun showing off Tux, the Linux mascot, on their product packaging and providing Linux drivers on their product CDs!

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If CrossFire isn't enough to satisfy you, well, AMD is working on other exciting Linux features too. We'll have to tell you about those on another day, but feel free to share your hopes and speculations in the Phoronix Forums.

My special hope would be DRI2 support, but I fear this is one thing which we won't see this year

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AMD's proprietary driver is now on par with NVIDIA's Linux driver and there are two open-source ATI drivers picking up new features and improvements on an almost daily basis.

Cool news overall and it's greatly appreciated (Thanks John and Co.!! )- but I'd hardly call it at being "on par" with NVidia's drivers.

AMD is in the process of pushing new high-end features into their Linux driver -- such as Multi-GPU CrossFire support

High-end features such as SLI are part of the NVidia offering, and while they're not as robust as the single card mode, we've had SLI for a while now. That's not "on par" yet- tell us this when the AMD team has Crossfire in place...

Though solidly working in single card mode and the penguin on the box is VERY much appreciated and VERY GOOD news all the same. Might even consider getting an eval board in the R600 series to verify function on customer apps. (I probably will with the first box with a Penguin on it spotted and me having a bit of free budget...)

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CrossFire X will be the leading MultiGPU technology. This is because CrossFire X is capable of running any CrossFire X-compatible cards. If you for example have got a RV670 for some time now, and want to have some more performance, you can just buy a new RV770 and combine those two cards which are of different generations. You could also use a RV670, a RV770Pro and a RV770XT. This is a confirmed feature for Windows and due to using the same codebase it should also work fine with Linx.